


Let it Burn

by DS Ryelle (herbalmoon)



Series: A Wren in the Willow [2]
Category: D.S. Ryelle
Genre: Air Force, Domestic Violence, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fire, Gen, Marine Corps, Minor Character Death, Past Abuse, Physical Abuse, Women in the Military
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:22:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28997427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herbalmoon/pseuds/DS%20Ryelle
Summary: After years of serving in the military to avoid her father, Alexandra goes home one more time to see her mother...and say goodbye.(Short story from my future bookA Wren in the Willow)
Series: A Wren in the Willow [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2127279





	1. Introduction

If you’re familiar with my work, you know I take great joy in creating characters for my “muse of the moment”, even if the outcome doesn’t always include a happy ending. _(“His Last Love”, anyone?)_ Usually, that means I’m rushing to publish my work as soon as I finish—at least until this happy ending turned into a miserable one.

I have been inordinately shy with the muse that has been “in service” to me since 2017, so much that I hesitate to call him by his given name. The appellation he took in my first attempt at a story (Asher) eventually stuck—especially after I realized that it looked like a shortened, Westernized version of _aasheervaad_ , the Hindi word for blessing. _(And since my patron goddess is Hindu, you’ll understand why it stuck!)_ I had hoped that Asher’s introduction to my literary world would be…well, maybe not romantic, since I’m not into romance novels…but certainly not what you’re about to read.

As with all character actors, it’s hard to say for which movie Asher is best known. He has received two Academy Awards, one indirectly via a supporting role in a Best Picture winner and the second for Best Supporting Actor in another film. It is the latter (fortunately or unfortunately) that inspires “Let it Burn”, along with my own experiences with abuse. Although I had a writing professor that wanted to change quite a bit of the story (especially the dialogue), I stood firm, feeling that having my protagonist bring up actual encounters I had with my abuser would make the tale that much more authentic. I can only hope that my attempt at authenticity doesn’t bother my readers too much more.

Call it catharsis, call it fear manifested onto paper, call it whatever you like…I’m just glad that my ending wasn’t Alexandra’s.


	2. I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't figure out how to render text messages without being able to change the font, so I used the quote option.

Alexandra rounded the corner, pulled in the first driveway she saw and shut off the rental.

“Son of a bitch,” she whispered, resting her head against the steering wheel. If he was there, there was no way she could go home—it made her sick to her stomach just to think about it.

_Home._

That was a joke.

She _had_ no home in the state of Massachusetts, save for what it pleased Hanscom’s commander to give her. The building her parents occupied was simply another house on another block in another subdivision, no less ordinary from any other home in Brookline. Alex had never actually lived there anyway, since her parents had taken up residence after her father’s retirement.

Retirement. That was another joke.

Pulling the plug after forty years in the Marines was supposed to be a time of rest and relaxation; maybe picking up that hobby you’d always dreamed of. It hadn’t changed her father a bit. She’d been back twice since he left the Corps and regretted every minute of it. She didn’t think it was Vietnam, Desert Storm or even IEDs in Kandahar—he’d _always_ been “Bastard Bonneville”.

Alex picked up her phone, already fishing for an excuse to give her mother.

> Sorry, Mom…something came in from the Pyeongyang desk at the last minute and I couldn’t make it. :( Maybe next time?

She erased it and tried again:

> Didn’t you say Brian had an outing this morning?

This time, she hit send before she could change her mind.

> Hi, sweetie! Did you have a safe flight?

“ _Mom!_ ” she hissed in frustration.

> Sorry honey, I know you were looking forward to some girl time, but the golf tourney was canceled due to a chance of rain this afternoon. You can still come over, though! Your dad and I are excited to see you. :)

“Oh yes, so _incredibly_ excited.” Alex rolled her eyes and dropped her phone back into the console. The last time she’d visited on leave, her father had greeted her with, “The fuck did you do to your hair?”

> I’d really rather not come by; _she wrote back after a few minutes._ Is there any way we could meet in a coffee shop somewhere?
> 
> Sorry, got muffins in the oven and can’t leave them! And we have coffee here if you want some.

_Set boundaries_ , her therapist had said. _Your mother will respect you for them_.

“Bullshit,” she grumbled. “Watch this.”

> I’ve told you multiple times in the past that I don’t feel comfortable visiting with Brian there, _Alex replied, her fingers flying over the onscreen keyboard._ If you want to schedule another day, that’s fine; but if Brian is more important, then I’ll get a flight back and won’t bother you again.
> 
> You and your father are equally important, Alexandra, and I’m sorry you feel otherwise. We’ll be here if you decide you’d like to visit, but I’m not going to leave your father at home just to please you.

“He’s not my father, Mom, he’s my _abuser_ ,” Alex said to her darkened phone. “I wish you’d understand that.”

> I don’t feel like arguing today, _she finally wrote._ If you change your mind, we can go to dinner; otherwise, I’m going back to base and get some work done.

Charlotte responded with silence.


	3. II

“I thought I told you to stay away from your mother?”

Alex started so hard, she nearly rolled out of bed. “How did you get in here?”

“Answer me, you stupid bitch!” Her father slapped her.

“Don’t you lay a hand on me, you psychotic bastard!”

He reached out to slap her again and she caught his wrist, twisting hard.

“Don’t. _Touch. Me!_ ” Alex repeated. “All I have to do is scream and the neighbors will come running with the MPs right behind them. Is that what you want? The high and mighty Brian Bonneville, finally in jail for all the bullshit he’s pulled over the years?”

Her father used his free hand to grab her hair and pull so hard that she screamed…


	4. III

And woke up.

“God. Shit. Fuck!”

Alex was on her hands and knees in bed, gasping for breath. She hadn’t had a nightmare that bad since Basic. Feeling the adrenaline leave her body, Alex rolled over so that she could collapse on her back in sudden exhaustion, one arm over her forehead. When the tears began to fall, Alex thanked… _whoever_ …that she hadn’t taken the offer to sleep in the barracks. She didn’t care that her ears were getting wet, that her hair was getting wet. All that mattered was that she was alone, behind the locked door of the guest cottage, safe within the fastness of the base. She knew protocol: no one—not even a Marine colonel like her father—could get anywhere near her unless she gave permission. He’d be stopped at the gates and sent home under the threat of police intervention. It was just a nightmare, years of abuse made manifest.

 _I can’t do this_ , she thought. _I can’t keep going through this every time I visit._ The twist in her stomach. The pounding heart when she thought about seeing her parents. The cascade of tears as yet another memory surfaced.

Ignoring the fact that it had just gone three o’clock, Alex got out of bed for real and woke her computer. It was too late to get a ride back on the next C130, but it wasn’t much of a sacrifice to fly commercial. Her CO had given her a week’s leave, but there was no reason why she couldn’t head home and just enjoy the time away from her desk. While HotFlight loaded, Alex checked her battery in case she had to call customer service.

> Are you still mad? _asked an unknown number._
> 
> You must have the wrong person, _she texted back._
> 
> The colonel doesn’t know about my burner, Sergeant Casler.

Her mother? This late?

> I didn’t ask you to visit simply because I missed you, it continued. I understand if you never want to come home again, but I need to give you something before you leave town.

She read it again. It was a trap. It _had_ to be a trap. She could imagine her mother texting in the middle of the night if she got up to use the bathroom, but calling her by her surname and rank? And what could Charlotte possibly have to tell her that would require a hidden phone?

Your father doesn’t know you’re in the military, a voice in her mind pointed out. Even if he somehow guessed, how would he know that you’d taken your mother’s last name? Wouldn’t he call you “Sergeant Bonneville”?

> If it’s all that important, you can bring it to the base, _she finally replied._ I’ll tell the guards to expect MY MOTHER tomorrow afternoon. No passengers, no substitutes.

Alex blocked the number before there could be any argument and began to look for flights the day after.


	5. IV

The fist banged on the door again as she squeezed the pillow to her chest and closed her eyes. She’d felt safe hiding upstairs in the beginning, but the longer Brian harassed her, the more her confidence eroded.

_“Come down here, Alexandra.”_

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” she whispered.

She could hear Brian’s feet walking along the porch, and then a sound like he’d kicked the storm door. Her hand shook as she released a side of the pillow to pick up the phone.

“Hanscom Public Safety,” said the voice on the other end.

More pounding. She jumped.

“This is Sergeant Casler. Why did you let my father onto the base?”

_“ **ALEXANDRA!** ”_

“I’m sorry, ma’am. Who’s your father?”

 _“Sir?”_ asked a faint voice from what sounded like the next house over. _“Sir, is there something wrong?”_

“Ma’am?”

Alex was having a hard time listening to the conversation outside and concentrating on her call at the same time.

“My father is Colonel Bonneville. I told the Watch that my father wasn’t allowed to see me under any circumstances; that the only visitor I was expecting today was my mother, Charlotte.”

“I apologize ma’am, but according to the Watch, the colonel said he had business with the medical center, and they didn’t see a reason to deny him access.”

 _“I look after the cottage when there aren’t any visitors._ ” The voice was closer to Alex’s window and was distinctly female. _“I can go get my key if you want to check on your daughter.”_

Alex felt her stomach drop.

“That was a lie,” she said, her voice becoming oddly calm. “Colonel Bonneville has a history of domestic violence and he invents stories to cover his actions. Please send the police…unless you like the idea of a body count.”

She terminated the call and switched hands to grab the off-duty piece she had in her nightstand. Her legs shook, but there was nothing she could do except wait for her father and the neighbor to find her.

 _“I’m worried my daughter might be hurt,”_ her father replied after a few interminable minutes of quiet. _“Would you mind calling the MPs?”_

_“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay with you?”_

_“I’m a retired Marine…we’ll be fine.”_

She couldn’t hear what the neighbor said, but the next sound was a key turning in the deadbolt.

“Are you going to continue to pretend you’re not hiding in your room, or am I going to have to come and get you?” her father demanded from downstairs.

_Please don’t let him hurt me…please don’t let him hurt me…please don’t let him hurt me…_

Alex took a deep, shuddering breath and went to stand at the top of the stairs, Smith & Wesson in hand.

“Well? Aren’t you going to come give me a hug?”

“Why, so you can slap me? Pull my hair? Tell me how much I shamed you for joining the Air Force instead of the Marines?” Against her better judgement, Alex stuck the gun in her pocket. “The MPs are already coming, Brian. I was calling them while you were making small talk with your little friend. I told them you lied your way onto the base and that you were trying to break into my house as we spoke.”

“I don’t understand why you won’t call me dad.”

“Because it’s a term of affection you don’t _deserve!_ ” As hard as she tried to keep her voice steady, Alex could hear her tears creeping into it. “What about the night Mom was sick and I lost track of time? Did you think it was affectionate to yell at me for ‘taking advantage of her illness’ when it was an honest mistake? I stood there _sobbing_ , begging you to understand that I’d simply screwed up and you kept yelling and yelling! You wouldn’t shut up until Mom got up and told you to knock it off and let me go to bed in peace.

“What about the night I was supposed to go see Harry Potter with my friends?” she continued. “My mother and I were having a simple discussion on whether it was a good idea on a school night, but you thought it was a better idea to intervene. When I told you to get out of my face, you pressed your chest to mine and spat in my face as you yelled. How was _that_ affectionate?”

The tears were starting to roll. “Did you know I kept track of how many times you blamed me for fighting with Mom? A _dozen_ between the ages of nine and sixteen. And you think you deserve to be called my father?”

“Because you _are_ responsible, Alexandra! You’re a demanding, selfish, overentitled little bitch who has made my life a living hell. Every time I laid a hand on you, it was no less than you deserved.”

“Do you even _listen_ to yourself? You’re standing in my house, telling me what a horrible person I am, telling me how I ruined your fucking life… _why?_ If I’m so goddamn terrible, then why the fuck are you even here? Shouldn’t you be on a golf course somewhere?”

Brian went for the stairs and Alex went for her gun.

“Don’t you fucking touch me, you fucking bastard!” Her voice was nearing a scream. “If you lay a hand on me, I swear to whatever gods are out there that I’ll shoot and damn the consequences!”

As soon as his foot hit the first tread, she fired. He faltered, but didn’t stumble backward and she ran.

“Going to crawl out the window like you did when you were a little girl?” he taunted. “It’s a bit of a drop…think you can handle it?”

Alex debated wasting the time trying to fire again, or to try to get the window open. Either way, the odds were pretty good that he’d get the upper hand and she’d be in trouble. Praying that he wasn’t too hard on her tail, Alex headed back to her bedroom and crouched on the windowseat, gun at the ready.

“Ready to miss me again?” her father jeered as he stepped inside.

“Your shoulder says otherwise.”

While he was distracted looking at the blood pooling on his left arm, Alex jumped off the seat and made for the door. Rather than trying to block her exit, Brian lunged over the bed and tried knocking the gun out of her hand, giving her ample time to run for the stairs. Despite being wounded, he was on her heels in a flash, wrenching the gun from her left hand as she fumbled with the lock in her right. The deadbolt gave a satisfying _snick_ and she elbowed him in the chest as she tried to get the door open. Despite the blow to his sternum, Brian leaned on the door to keep it closed and—true to her dream—caught his fingers in her hair.

Alex screamed, but it was more in rage than pain, as he’d foolishly left her hands free. Her right hand came off the latch and turned into a fist on its way into his nose. He shouted and finally backed off, allowing her to make a dive for her gun and come up pointing it at his chest. As if to punctuate that their battle was over, sirens finally, _mercifully_ , sounded in the distance.


	6. V

Alex closed her book, stretched and fumbled for a pen to mark off the day on the calendar. Five days down and another sixteen left until her disciplinary hearing—and this after two weeks on house arrest back at Hanscom. At least here, she was free to walk around the base and take as much of the northern California sunshine as she could stand. Alex hadn’t been much for long walks since the hikes of Basic, but she’d found she needed the escape from her apartment when the book got too confusing or the longing for her desk in Cryptology got too strong.

“Frickin’ book,” she muttered as she got up and attempted to hunt for her hiking shoes. Her mother had claimed _Where the Morning Glories Grow_ was a spellbook handed down from her great grandmother, that she _needed_ to take it before she left because it was part of her inheritance, but Alex was starting to believe it was more of a prank.

Oh, it had been a spellbook. Once. Alex _still_ swore she’d left her bookmark on top of a passage marked “To Ward the Home Against the Malicious”; but when she’d returned to it, the bookmark was resting on the third page of a treatise on chamomile and all traces of magick had disappeared.

Right before she’d stopped to mark the calendar, the section she’d been reading on the uses of jasmine had turned into gibberish. Not even the oddly placed Ys and double Ds of Welsh, but real and true _gibberish_.

Alex finished tying off her left shoe at the same time the phone rang. Cursing, she tottered back to her desk and picked up the landline the base still insisted on using.

“Casler? Beck. I need you down here, on the double.”

“Sir? You know I’m off duty for another two weeks, right?”

“This has nothing to do with work, sergeant,” her CO replied. “I don’t care if you come in your civvies, just throw something on and get down here.”

Major Beck hung up without waiting for a reply.

Alex blinked at the phone before putting it back on to charge and fishing out her other shoe. She got all the way downstairs, held the door open for another sergeant from the third floor and made it five feet down the sidewalk before she was interrupted again.

_Ping!_

> Hey, hon, I’m so sorry, _said the text from her cousin Katie from Michigan._ If you want to talk, let me know.

She raised an eyebrow at her phone. _Huh?_

_Ping!_

> Lexi, I hope they’re not making you deploy any time soon, _read the text from her aunt Rosemarie._ You need to be here with us.

She _hated_ being called Lexi, but that had taken a backseat to the confusing messages—a confusion that got even worse with the _whoosh_ that announced an email from her Grandma Joyce.

> Alexandra, your grandfather is going to call you in twenty minutes and walk you through applying for an emergency furlough. Don’t let your commander argue you out of it—go up to _his_ commander if you have to.

Alex felt a knot forming in her stomach as she picked up her pace. Hopefully, Major Beck had answers.


	7. VI

“Sit down, Casler, we need to talk.”

She hesitated at the door, but when her CO didn’t bother to salute, Alex closed the door and sat down, anxiously folding her hands in her lap.

“I don’t generally take a personal interest in my NCOs,” the major said after a moment. “But you apparently made quite an impression on my wife at the barbecue last spring.” He slid a tablet over toward her, a paused video on the screen. “She sent me this, concerned it had something to do with you.”

Alex thought about the messages waiting for her on the silenced phone in her pocket, bit her lip and pressed play.

 _“Two people were found dead in an early morning house fire Tuesday on the west side of Brookline,”_ a female reporter announced as the video struggled to come into focus.

> “Firefighters were called to the scene around 4:30 to battle a blaze that appeared to have started in the living room and crawled up the back of the house. Authorities are still waiting for confirmation from the medical examiner, but neighbors say they believe the victims are sixty-five year old retired Marine colonel Brian Bonneville and his wife, sixty-three year old Charlotte Bonneville. The investigation is ongoing, but the Norfolk County arson specialist says it’s too soon to rule out a murder/suicide.

“I can see if I can get your base restriction transferred back to Hanscom if you need to go home.”

Alex looked at her hands and wrestled with the fact that there was no easy answer. She wanted to be there for her mother’s funeral, but she didn’t want to see Brian in his casket, didn’t want Marines in their dress blues filing past her and telling her how her father had changed their lives. She couldn’t imagine people thanking her for her father’s service, didn’t want the flag presented to her at the end of the funeral. She wanted to be with her family, but didn’t want any of the trappings that went along with it.

“My family wants me to apply for bereavement leave, but I don’t know if I can handle going home.”


End file.
